


Enchanted

by darkbluebox



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Magic, Manipulation, Possessive Behavior, Protectiveness, as a treat, but like with magic, dark katelyn, katelyn should be allowed a little murder, witch Katelyn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29114136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkbluebox/pseuds/darkbluebox
Summary: Katelyn slides the necklace around his neck carefully, watching as goosebumps spring up in the wake of the silver chain. Aaron stills under the touch, and while she can’t see his expression, she can see the flutter of his eyelashes as he blinks. Her fingers brush the nape of his neck as she fastens the clasp, and his skin is warm like melted butter.She presses a kiss to the clasp, letting the spell wind through Aaron’s veins until his entire body is held in her grasp.
Relationships: Katelyn/Aaron Minyard, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, if you squint
Comments: 11
Kudos: 36





	Enchanted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notaboutstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notaboutstarlight/gifts).



> This is a gift for [notaboutstarli1.](https://twitter.com/notaboutstarli1), who won my twitter follower giveaway 🎉🎉🎉 thank you for giving me such interesting prompts!
> 
> Content warnings: minor injuries, references to physical abuse, possessiveness, manipulation, mind-reading, minor character death. 
> 
> The relationship depicted in this fic is intentionally problematic and should not be read as a moral endorsement or normalisation.

She slides the necklace around his neck carefully, watching as goosebumps spring up in the wake of the silver chain. He stills under the touch, and while she can’t see his expression, she can see the flutter of his eyelashes as he blinks. Her fingers brush the nape of his neck as she fastens the clasp, and his skin is warm like melted butter.

“Promise you’ll wear it?” she whispers against the shell of his ear.

He fingers the chain for a moment before slipping it below the hem of his jumper, safe from prying eyes. “Yeah.” He smiles, and for a moment he’s a different person. Katelyn isn’t sure whether she draws a greater sense of victory from the extracted promise or the bright, fragile smile, but it sings through her chest like a songbird regardless.

She presses a kiss to the clasp, letting the spell wind through Aaron’s veins until his entire body is held in her grasp. She listens to the tides of his thoughts as they slide in and out of consciousness. He’s thinking about her. For once, _only_ her.

Days pass. Aaron’s bruises clear up as though his skin is a notebook turned to a fresh page. Someone else will be receiving the injuries meant for him – the necklace cannot erase pain, only transfer it – but Katelyn doesn’t care about the faceless victim who pays the price for Aaron’s protection. More interesting by far is the invisible glow cradling Aaron’s skin: she can taste it on him, flickering like a blue flame against her lips. The necklace glints in the corner of her vision, a reminder of promises kept.

Aaron’s brother comes to school with a black eye. Katelyn doesn’t care.

On a sunny afternoon she finds Aaron in the library, head bent so far over a textbook that his nose is nearly touching the pages. Numbers and figures swirl around his head in a tornado. She resists the temptation to swat them away like flies. _Want, want, want_. Aaron is nothing if not driven; it was what drew her to him in the first place.

“I’m going to flunk this class,” he says suddenly, shoving the textbook away.

There’s a flask in Katelyn’s hands that wasn’t there a moment ago. She sets it down in front of him.

“Drink. It’ll help clear your head.”

“You’re amazing.” He wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her in against him. She watches intently as he unscrews the lid. The coffee-that-isn’t-coffee spills bitter steam into the air.

His pupils dilate as his thoughts untangle themselves. Aaron breathes, and pulls the textbook back towards him. Katelyn smiles.

For reasons unknown to the faculty but not to Katelyn, Aaron’s algebra teacher doesn’t make it to school the next day. The exam is pushed back by a week, and Aaron, naturally, aces it.

“My brother hasn’t slept in three days,” says Andrew without preamble. Katelyn looks up from her painting, and it takes her a moment to remember where she is. The art department is usually deserted after school hours, and she has no idea how Aaron’s brother knew to find her here. She isn’t the easiest person to follow, after all, and she’s sure the janitor usually has the doors locked by now. “And yesterday he picked up a hot oven tray with his bare hands. He didn’t even realise it should have burned him.” Andrew holds his hand up, palm open and facing her. There’s a vicious red scar across it. “Care to explain?”

Katelyn fakes concern. “You should take that to the school nurse.”

It’s strange how a face can be so familiar and yet so _not_ all at once. Andrew’s expression curls into a sneer as he closes his hand into a fist. Katelyn cannot imagine the same expression on Aaron’s face: it simply wouldn’t _fit._ Andrew’s words, when he speaks, are low with threat. “You aren’t on any class register. You aren’t in any school photographs. None of the teachers recognise your name. I know what you are.”

Katelyn lets her nice-girl expression fold itself flat. “And?”

It’s a taunt more than it is a question. She wants to see how far he’ll go, whether he’ll be foolish enough to threaten her. Those that do usually meet interesting ends.

“Tell me what you want with Aaron.”

“Want. That’s a funny word to hear on your tongue.” Katelyn tilts her head to the side, mirroring Andrew’s posture. “Your kind are so often full of want. But you, you don’t want anything.”

Andrew’s expression doesn’t change, but something auburn flashes behind his gaze. “No, not quite,” Katelyn continues. “You want nothing. Someone who _is_ Nothing.”

Andrew’s attention flickers inwards for a moment before he catches himself. “Tell me what you want with Aaron,” he repeats, his voice like stone.

“I’m just giving your brother the things he wants.” Katelyn smiles with sugar-sweet innocence. “What’s wrong with that?”

“We can’t always have what we want,” Andrew says. His voice is heavy with the weight of experience.

“ _You_ can’t,” Katelyn corrects. When she next looks up from her painting, Andrew has gone.

Want is a tricky thing, so easily twisted up in the annuls of sense and morality and selflessness that the end product dispensed by the consciousness is near-unrecognisable. Aaron’s surface desires are simple and pure: safety, success, love. The deeper ones, those that lie unacknowledged in the muddier parts of his subconscious, take longer to unearth.

She finds Aaron in his preferred corner of the library, sunk into a beanbag as though wishing it would swallow him whole. There’s a book open in his lap, but she would bet any amount in any currency that he hadn’t read a single word of it. His misery hits her like a wall as she approaches, so overwhelming that she almost misses the absence of the enchanted chain around his neck. In its place is a faint purple bruise not quite hidden by the collar of his shirt.

“What happened?” Her tone is distraught, but Aaron flinches like it was a reprimand. His hand goes to his neck.

“Nothing.”

Katelyn is not a mind-reader, because minds are not books to be perused. She sees only the flickers and flashes offered to her, in this case a high, furious voice, hands that strike without hurting until the necklace chain snaps and then they _do_.

Aaron is shaking when she pulls him in against her. Aaron is full of want, all for something she can’t give him.

Yet.

“I need a spell.” Subtlety is not Andrew’s strong suit. Or perhaps it is, and he simply doesn’t see her as worth the effort. Katelyn glances surreptitiously around the cafeteria, but nobody is within listening distance.

“We can’t always get what we want,” Katelyn parrots.

“This isn’t about what I want,” Andrew replies levelly. His eyes flicker with the same screech of images that Aaron’s did, and Katelyn finally sees the resemblance between them. The new necklace pours from her palm to his like molten silver, and she is careful not to look at the bloody images in Andrew’s mind as he clips the charm around his neck.

The news spreads through the school like wildfire; car wreckage, Tilda Minyard dead, her son miraculously unharmed in the driver’s seat. Only Katelyn knows which son was really in the car, how he climbed from the flipped and crushed fiat without a scratch on him, why their uncle was hospitalised on the same day for injuries no one could explain.

Andrew knows that magic has its costs. Fortunately, he has a long list of people deserving of a little pain, and Luther Hemmick is as good a recipient of Andrew’s injuries as any. When he returns the necklace to Katelyn, however, he does so with no more regard than he would give a borrowed handkerchief. There are many people Andrew would see dead or worse without complaint, Katelyn sees it in the cruel hands clawing up from the recesses of his subconscious. She almost offers her assistance in the matter, but the offer sticks to the back of her throat. Andrew doesn’t work like that; unlike her, he sees pain and death as means to an end. The hot rush of satisfaction from a job well-done doesn’t hum through him like it does her.

Days trickle and tumble into weeks, and Aaron doesn’t return to school.

“I’m a friend from class,” Katelyn says to Aaron’s cousin when he opens the door. She nearly knocks over a stack of cardboard boxes waiting to be unpacked on her way up the stairs, the carpets of which still smell of the real-estate agent’s lemon-scented cleaner. Andrew comes out onto the landing as she approaches. His gaze flicks up and down, calculating.

“You think I’m just going to hand him over to you?”

“I think you want to,” Katelyn smiles levelly, and Andrew is the first to blink. “You know I can keep him safer than you ever could.” She steps into Andrew’s space, and he watches her like he would something wild and unpredictable. Katelyn can’t say she minds. “Go and chase your Nothing.”

Andrew’s eyes flash auburn once more. Katelyn memorises the face of the boy in Andrew’s mind for future leverage, although she doubts she will need it. The head-tilt Andrew sends her as he retreats to his room isn’t quite approval, but she knows better than to expect or demand more. Trust is a more valuable currency than most people realise.

Aaron’s room is deathly quiet as she nudges the door open. “I brought brownies,” Katelyn says, her words puncturing the silence like a needle. She sets the Tupperware container on Aaron’s bedside table and pulls the lid off, letting the smell of fresh baking warm the room. It helps to mask the fog of pain that has filled Aaron’s bedroom. It’s stronger than Katelyn expected, difficult to breathe through. Aaron doesn’t respond, doesn’t look at her, doesn’t even blink, and were it not for the steady rise and fall of his chest Katelyn could have mistaken him for furniture. “Try one,” she says, nudging the tub towards him. “It’ll make you feel better.”

Finally, Aaron turns towards her, lip curling, eyes burning. She has seen this expression many times, but never directed at her. “Why? Will it magic my mother back out of her grave?”

Katelyn freezes, her grip tight on the tub. Aaron knows. Aaron _knows_. “You don’t want that.”

“And what the fuck do you know about what I want?”

“Everything.” Katelyn catches his face with trembling fingers and pulls it in close, gaze steady as she looks into Aaron’s eyes, looks _through_ them, and sees her own reflection looking back. His skin is fire-hot under her touch, almost feverish. “ _Everything.”_

Aaron’s gaze drops to her lips, and in the split second before he pushes her away she knows they’re thinking the same thing. “You gave Andrew that necklace. I’m not fucking stupid, I know what it does. You helped him kill my mother.”

“You wanted her dead,” Katelyn replies, and Aaron flinches. “You wanted her dead, Aaron.”

“No.”

“Yes.” Katelyn reaches for his hand once more, turning it over in her grasp to trace the familiar lines of his palm. Life, heart, fate. The right witch could learn everything she would ever need to know about a person from a glance at those lines. The story Aaron’s palm tells is short and tragic, but fate didn’t account for Katelyn’s interference. “You wanted her to suffer as she made you suffer. You wanted her to die, and rightly so.”

She watches him struggle with the words, his hand clenching back into a fist. “Why do it? Why do _any_ of it?”

“Why shouldn’t I give you everything you want? You deserve-”

Aaron cuts her off with a bark of laughter, low and bitter. “People like me don’t deserve anything. And _nobody_ should get everything they want. Not when the cost is…” Aaron stops, breathes, and his shoulders slouch as the fight seeps from him. “You know I couldn’t feel a thing after you gave me that necklace? No pain, sure, but no warmth, no comfort, just an empty, cold _nothing_.”

Katelyn purses her lips, struggling to hold down the truth that surges behind them like bile. That she would chain Aaron up and drag him to the pits of hell if she thought that would protect him from the dangers of the human world, that she would ball up his soul like a skein of yarn and keep it in a lockbox if it meant she could keep anyone else from laying a finger on it ever again. The price of his protection is pocket change in comparison.

“But I want-” Katelyn stops herself, words burning on the tip of her tongue. Dangerous words. Desires.

“Tell me,” Aaron says, and he Wants to know, so she can’t help but tell him.

“I want you to want nothing,” Katelyn says, the words bitter like dark chocolate. “Nothing but _me.”_

The simple words barely stretch to cover her meaning, which is that she wants his every breath, his every thought, his every waking moment to be filled with no want for material possession or sensation or status or experience other than her lips on his and his heart in her hands. She wants him to want her as completely and endlessly as she wants him. She wants his want, all of it, forever.

He wants to understand, and Katelyn’s magic crackles without her direction at her fingertips. Something moves in her mind, shifting and flowing like lava into his, and Aaron’s eyes widen in understanding. For a moment she thinks she has ruined it, that Aaron will turn her away and the reflection of her in his eyes will shatter beyond repair. Then, slowly, he reaches for the Tupperware container.

“It’ll make me feel better?” he asks quietly.

“Like she never existed at all.”

Aaron bites into the brownie, and his woes and worries are swallowed with it.

“My uncle is still in hospital,” Aaron says suddenly. His voice is devoid of any of the grief that would normally accompany such a statement. “I want to change that.”

“Oh?” Katelyn says, the beginnings of a smile creeping across her face.

“I think the morgue would suit him better.”

Katelyn breathes in, victory flickering hot in her chest. “And after that?”

Aaron looks at her, eyes flicking up, down, up, then sticking. He threads his hand through hers. “Anything you want,” he whispers against her lips, and she doesn’t have to ask to know it’s a promise.

That’s all she ever wanted, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments are, as always, appreciated <3
> 
> Come say hi and keep an eye out for future giveaways on my [tumblr](https://darkblueboxs.tumblr.com) and [twitter.](https://twitter.com/darkblueboxs)


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